The 'Baby Carrot' Scandal

Well, I'm scandalized, but I suppose I should have known. In a world where "organic" means almost nothing, why should I have thought a baby carrot was, in fact, a baby carrot? Silly, gullible me. I still think labels usually tell the truth. In the produce section, even!

Yes, it's true folks. Those little carrots in the bags that y'all put in your kids' lunches and dip in ranch dressing at your barbeque ... they are adult carrots. Adult carrots shaved down and rounded out to look baby carrots (or to look like what marketers think we think a baby carrot would look like, because, hell, they know we're just a bunch of plebes and have never been anywhere fancy enough to have laid eyes on a real, fresh, pre-pubescent carrot).
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Fish Futures

"The demand is going to increase and the world's ability to produce commercially caught fish has pretty much peaked," says Dan Swecker, secretary-treasurer of the Washington (State) Fish Growers Association and also a state senator. "The increased demand is going to have to be supplied by aquaculture" -- meaning farmed -- "products."

If he's right, and if it will, there's still the little matter of its record. Much of the nutritional benefit of wild fish is lost in the farmed variety because of their artificial diets. Proximity to farmed salmon has led to rampant disease and decline among native fish in every part of the world except the Pacific Northwest...so far. Meanwhile, genetically engineered salmon await FDA approval, part of the vast, uncontrolled biologic experiment in which we are all subjects. The dilemma is apparent: To fill an extraordinary demand built on genuine need, the multibillion dollar aquaculture industry has turned the carnivorous salmon into a plant eater, while changing its look, taste and nutritional value. The dilemma doesn't end there: If they ruin the seas to grow an inferior product, can you call it a solution?
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